Wednesday

Apr.
28, 1999

Sweet Betsy from Pike

It was on this day in 1947 that the Norwegian anthropologist THOR
HEYERDAHL and five others shoved off from a dock in Peru aboard a balsa
wood craft, the Kon Tiki, on a
trip to prove that Peruvian Indians could have crossed the Pacific and
settled Polynesia.

It's the birthday of Scottish folk singer JEAN REDPATH, born in
Edinburgh in 1937.

It's the birthday in Monroeville, Alabama, 1926, of HARPER LEE,
author of only one book, To Kill
a Mockingbird (1960).

It's the birthday of folksinger and pioneer folklorist JOHN JACOB
NILES, born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1892, who collected many folk
songs from the Southern Appalachians in the early 20th century.

It was on this day in 1687 that the first volume of Isaac Newton's
MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY was published in
England.

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Although he has edited several anthologies of his favorite poems, O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound forges a new path for Garrison Keillor, as a poet of light verse.
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